Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.
Ernest Hemingway
As America’s status as a healthy country continues to slide down the scale, it’s not surprising to see barely a blip about the US in a lifestyle study that touted France as the most leisurely country. It was a bit more quantitative, actually. The French spend the most time eating and sleeping of any country. What’s interesting is that they are also the second largest market for McDonald’s, meaning the segment that doesn’t eat fast food must be exceptionally tranquillo.
How does this relate to health? The countries mentioned in the study, nearly all from Western Europe, show up in the rankings of healthiest countries. The US, pinnacle of wellness a generation ago, is now near the bottom of developed countries in nearly all health and wellness statistics. We did manage to rank second in hours slept. A second study should probably be done to see what percentage of that is drug induced.
pic: preparations for le nap. tres bonne!
"the second largest market for McDonald’s"... the only other burger chain in France is Quick (from Belgium). So "McDo", as we call it in France, doesn't have much competition. An other popular type of fast food (fast growing within the last decade) is gyro (pita bread filed with lamb/chicken, sauce and french fries). Sandwish remains king though (jambon-beurre especially).
ReplyDeleteWhat I thought was funny about this study is that just a couple of weeks ago French news were reporting a French study saying that French citizen were sleeping less and less :) (but now that France is #1 they seemed to have forgotten all about it and gladly report the new results).